


Dr. Leonard L. Church's Guide to the New World

by yorkisms



Series: Horizon: Red vs Blue [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horizon: Zero Dawn Fusion, Cultural Anthropology, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 10:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15928712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkisms/pseuds/yorkisms
Summary: While he's got all these people from the future digging him out of the earth, the ALPHA AI tries to figure out what their respective societies are like.Meanwhile, Grif meets an old friend.





	1. The "Savage" East

**Author's Note:**

> The official second part of Horizon: RVB! 
> 
> This one is split into two chapters, the first talking about the Banuk and Nora. The second talks about the Oseram, and then there's one more tribe that appears openly in game not represented in the dig crew...but don't worry, Grif is meeting with one of them soon enough.

Caboose assigns his assistant to start working with Church’s remote projectors, so as not to ruin the ones he uses daily. 

Andersmith is young, maybe eighteen, and looks a bit like Caboose- dresses like him, too. But he doesn’t have the wires threaded through his skin. He clearly reveres Church just as much as Caboose, but he’s more coherent to talk to- even if he thinks Caboose is some kind of savant. 

“So you’re from up north?” Church asks, toying with a holo-puzzle as Andersmith examines some machinery. The kid nods. 

“It’s a region called Ban-Ur. It’s where all Banuk are from, spirit.” 

“You can just say Church, Andersmith. So you guys...worship machines?” 

Andersmith shakes his head. “Not quite. When you look one of the machines in the eyes, their eyes are blue. That is the essence of life and purity. Humans cannot contain blue light, but machines can. So they are sacred, and part of the life cycle like the animals.” 

Church’s hologram sits slowly. “Okay, I guess that actually makes a modicum of sense, if you don’t know how a machine works.” 

“The stories talk about a woman named Banukai,” Andersmith says as if he knows it by heart. “She’s our ancestor. She was chased here by cannibals who could not stop eating, and they wouldn’t leave her and her family alone. She took the spirit of the blue light into herself and destroyed them, but died in the process. So we know it’s too much for someone to contain the blue light on their own. But shamans try to communicate with its power with the wires, like Caboose wears.”

“So the wires are to try and…?”

“Introduce blue light to the body and help contain it.” 

Church can’t help but wrinkle his nose. “You’re going to buy into that?” 

“Oh, with honor and pride, spirit. I was honored to be chosen as Caboose’s apprentice, and when the day comes I must take over from him for our Werak...I will regret that I can’t be as smart as him, but I’ll do my best.” 

“Werak?”

“Yes spirit, we live in weraks. Small groups that hunt and gather on their own, as part of one larger tribe.”

“Like wolf packs,” Church muses. 

“Like what?” 

“Wolves, they’re like...big dogs?” 

“What’s a dog?” 

“Okay, neat, wolves and dogs are extinct. Keep talking.” 

“Each werak has a shaman and chieftain, and hunters. We settle wherever we may, although, in the south of Ban-Ur, where the weather can be slightly less harsh, some weraks stay relatively settled. Like ours.”

“The one you and Caboose come from.” 

“Oh, yes, spirit. It’s in a nice little forest clearing near an Oseram village.” Andersmith’s eyes turn a little misty, and Church recognizes that as homesickness. “Our chieftain, Nessa, sent Caboose down here to discuss politics with the Nora, because he’s so polite and well spoken...then when he found you, he got her permission to send for me, since I can help. After all, it’s the duty of a shaman to harvest machine parts. This should be no different, spirit. The last thing we want is to hurt you.” 

“I’m sure it is, kid,” Church says with a sigh, resting his chin on one holographic hand. 

Andersmith’s eyes light up, and he holds up some wires. “I need to go talk to Caboose right away, spirit! I’ll send Tucker and Grif down to make sure you don’t get bored if I get held up. Will that be alright?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Church says with a shrug, kicking his legs. He’s talked to Tucker often, Grif, less so. 

Besides, talking to Andersmith about the Banuk piqued his interest. What  _ is _ with all the cultures of this new world? 

Church, in all the memories given to him and his core, is a scientist. The director had a highly analytical mind, and Church was simply the same in that regard. And they both clearly remembered a solid basis in cultural comparative studies and anthropology. In fact, Church thinks smugly, he distinctly remembers they aced that class. 

Okay. So, his new project is he’s going to write a mental compendium on the new civilizations that have risen while he was asleep. 

Chapter one is all the information Andersmith gave him about the Banuk. 

Chapter two will be whatever he can pry out of Tucker and Grif about these Nora whose land he lives on.

_ Allegedly. _

\--

Apparently the jump from the hole in the ceiling to the floor is universally classified as “not that bad,” because even Grif can make it without much trouble, and he’s rather fat, Church realizes. He’s got patches of vitiligo, and he’s eating some sort of cooked meat Church can’t smell to recognize. Tucker approaches him first. 

“Hey, Andersmith said to keep an eye on you?” 

“Yeah, if he had his way you’d have to wait on me hand and foot. Fortunately for you, I don’t give a shit.” Church sits down. “So. Tell me about your people.” 

“Psh, what? As if we know anything. Grif’s been outcast since he was...how old are you?” 

Grif simply glares. “Long time.”

“Jesus, what’d you do?” 

“Mother left,” Grif says simply. Tucker looks uneasy. 

“Yeah, and...having a mother is kind of the most important thing. It’d be different if it was a death, but...being abandoned as a kid is grounds for instant out.” 

“Matriarchy,” Church muses quietly to himself. “But outcasting a kid for a shitty parent is kind of...not great. I can see that for things like murder and theft, not existing.” 

“Yeah, join the club.”

“What did you do?” Church asks Tucker, who shrugs sheepishly. “I was seeing this chick, dude. You know how it is.”

Church absolutely does not, but he’s gonna let that slide for the moment. 

“I’m trying to learn about you people. This...new world, and what you know about where I come from. And what happened.” 

“You don’t know what happened to the metal world?” Grif says, mouth full. “Pretty stupid 'spirit,' if you ask me.”

“Hey, they locked me up down here. Whatever happened, I wasn’t awake for it.” 

Tucker raises his eyebrows. “So what  _ do _ you know?” 

Church sighs.  _ Social exchange. To get to know about their world, they want to know about you.  _

“I dunno. The ‘metal world’ as you call it was pretty high tech, obviously. There are a few other artificial intelligences like me...although artificial is a strong word when it comes to me. In 2044, the world governments passed the Turing Act. That put regulations on constructions of AI, who were becoming increasingly ubiquitous.” Church kicks his legs. “I know I was one of a few who by their very nature violated that act.” 

“Huh. So I guess the old ones did sin.”

“Ha. All humans sin, Tucker, that’s just how it is.” 

“So what’s so wrong about you?” 

“My creator was a researcher. He wanted an AI representation of a human brain to help him understand the differences between a synthetic brain and a human brain. So he started by blurring the lines up. Ta-da, and yours truly was born.” Church paces the length of his projector. “Though he didn’t know it at the time, he was also making a weird sort of time capsule. To create a synthetic interpretation of a human brain, he used his own head. So, I’m pretty much his clone. Come to think of it, that probably not only violates the Turing Act but also the 2034 Clone Provisions.” 

“You guys had a lot of laws."

“Just for scientific research,” Church replies. 

“So what do you know about the end of the metal world?” 

“I don’t. My creator kicked down the door one night at four in the goddamn morning, told me he was shutting me down, and said something about a plague.”

“A plague?”

“He called it the Faro Plague,” Church confirms. Tucker hums. 

“So does that mean anything to you, or…”

“There was a corporation,” Church says thoughtfully. 

Grif and Tucker look at him blankly. 

“A business? A big business?”

Silence. 

“A group of people who sell things?!”

“Ohh, okay, I getcha,” Grif says. Church puts his head in his holographic hands. 

“There was a corporation. Faro Automated Solutions. They made machines- uhh, ‘dumb’ AIs as they’re called- to do this manual labor and that job. They made war machines, mostly. I assume kind of like the ones you guys hunt out there. Big guns, tear you apart?”

“Gun?” 

“Oh god dammit,” Church says with a sigh. “I have to explain everything to you people. First dogs don’t exist anymore and now I have to define a fucking gun. Everyone knows what guns are.” 

“Dude, I don’t know what dogs are, and I think you’re the only one that knows what a gun is, either.” 

“It’s like a bow and it fires really fucking fast, Tucker! It kills people!” 

“Why the fuck would you want that instead of a bow?”

“It kills better? It fires faster? It’s smaller?” 

“Okay, shut up, I don’t wanna hear about your weird old world weapons.” 

“Old world?! Where I come from no one has used a bow for anything but target practice for over a thousand years!”

“Well, you’re not there now, idiot.” 

“Douchebag,” Church huffs, taking a seat. “Don’t you guys worship a mountain? How am I the idiot?” 

“It’s not  _ just _ a mountain, dude, it’s All-Mother. It’s where we came from. How we escaped the evil machines.” 

“Humans come from years of evolution out of great apes and machines are about as evil as animals. You don’t come from shit.”

“Hey, Tucker, shut the weird holo-dude up or I’m gonna call Andersmith back down to shut him up.”

“Andersmith wouldn’t power me down,” Church snaps. “None of you even have clearance.” 

“Haha, dude, fuck clearance. We have two Oseram tinkerers and two Banuk shamans. Between the four of them, someone really will shut you up.”

“Alright, alright. Church, don’t be a dick. Grif, don’t try to get Simmons to shut him down, one of you will probably just delete him.” 

“I did  _ not  _ last this long to get deleted by you idiots.”

“Awh, re- _ lax _ , Church. You’re doing pretty good already.”

“Shut up.”


	2. The Claim (And: A Hidden Agenda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wash speaks for the Oseram. 
> 
> Grif brings a new player into the dig.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whaaat? Mysterious cameo for 0.5 paragraphs at the end? Who could it be???
> 
> Okay, time to drop the facade: 
> 
> It's my other favorite character here to let me trash ship my ot3. Don't mind me.

“So...a plague,” Tucker says that night, sitting up in a leather sleeping bag. “What do you think that means?”

Church shrugs. “I dunno. A biological plague wouldn’t have any effect on me.” To demonstrate, he manipulates his holographic form to pass his own hand through his body. “And it would have been really hard to wipe out  _ literally everyone _ that way. So plague must mean something else, but what?” He sits down on the edge of his projector. “I’ll have to do some research. There’s other stations out there, other bunkers like this one. I need to find out what the computers there know.”

“Any chance you’ll find some other AI friends?”

Church snorts. “Given how drastically things have changed? Probably not.”

\--

The next day, Church isn’t sure what adventure Caboose and Andersmith are dragging everyone on, but he’s getting babysat by Wash.

“Come on, tell me what you’re all about,” Church begs, “I got Andersmith, Tucker, and Grif chatting yesterday, an AI wants to know about  _ your _ tribe.”

Wash snorts, not looking up from the arrows he’s crafting. “We aren’t a tribe. Not really.”

“Come on, then what are you?”

Wash sighs, then talks as he works. “No set government. Confederation of settlements in the claim. West of where the Banuk live.”

“Do you believe in anything?” 

“That the other tribes who believe in something are full of scrap.” Wash holds up an arrow. “Look at that. A little...well, classic, but there’s a use for it.” 

“Oh, come on. You don’t have any worldview. No traditions. Nothing? You have no culture?” 

“We strip machines,” Wash says simply. “We take what we need and use every bit. Everything’s a machine if you look at it right.” 

Church cocks his head, thinking about his creator’s education in human psychology. “I guess you could say that. The guy who made me, who you’d call one of the old ones, he was a...psychologist. Kinda like one of your machine experts, but for the human mind. Trying to figure out how it works, what’s wrong or right in a specific one.” 

“That’s a harder machine to strip than any of ours,” Wash replies, a hint of being impressed in his tone. “People did that? In the old world?”

“Sure, understanding for understanding’s sake, or to help people live their best lives. Talk about all your problems, work them out with someone. Except instead of a friend, it’s someone who understands how people think and exactly how to deal with that.”

“Sounds dangerous, to give someone you don’t know that kind of power. For all you know they could be trying to get information out of you. Or shoot you in the back.” 

“They had laws about that, actually. Rules for what psychologists can’t do with a patient, so on. If you broke ‘em you’d lose money- or go to jail.”

“Money.”

“Currency, you know, how do you people trade?” 

“Machine parts and metal shards.” 

“You’d lose your metal shards. Hey, why do you make arrows out of the same shit your money is?” 

“Utilitarian,” Wash grunts, picking up a weapon Church doesn’t recognize and beginning to work. 

“You’re the worst,” Church grumbles, leaning his chin on one hand to watch.

\--

Grif’s leaning against a tree, tall grass all around to keep him out of view of the machines grazing nearby. 

They’re benevolent, a regular part of the world to everyone. Most of them even scare off if shooed away. Grif doesn’t really mind- he does kind of find the sounds of them digging around in the soil to be as natural as the birdsong or the chittering of the native foxes and raccoons. If he cared, he’d be waiting to shoot the blaze canisters off the loitering striders to harvest- they’re vital for traps.

Normally, if Grif was sitting like this, the area would be littered with those same traps for animal and machine- and man, if anyone trying to take advantage of him wasn’t careful enough. 

But not this time. 

Because this time, Grif is waiting for someone. 

The crunch of heavy, tall feet on the dirt road indicates approach. Grif’s eyes are closed to the scenic area, the tall, ice-capped mountains, perfectly green grass, and clear sky. But he hears this person’s approach as clearly as he would see the horned robots now alerted by the new presence if he opened his eyes. 

He doesn’t, though, because he knows exactly who he’s waiting to see. And he knows that he can’t fool this one into thinking he’s asleep as much as he can fool the others back at the dig site. 

While the Nora sacred lands are safe, and picturesque, really, ever since Grif met the person he’s meeting again some years back, he’s longed to escape this life to live similarly somewhere else. 

Somewhere the people actually speak to you. 

Kaikaina, he has no idea what she’d think about leaving the Sacred Land. It’s a decision for him, but, if she chooses to stay...he’ll never be allowed back. They’ll never see each other again. 

So he needs to make this right. Completely right.

“You are not fooling anyone,” the familiar stranger rumbles, folding his arms over his stupidly fit (even for a society of hunter-gatherers) chest. “I know you are awake, Grif.” 

A quicksilver grin spreads across Grif’s face, and he opens one eye, looking up at his visitor mischievously. 

“Guess I can’t get you with that one.”

He always knew that, though.

“You are not supposed to call me across the border for just a chat,” comes the reply, as his friend unfolds his arms, dappled sunlight playing on warm, acorn-colored skin and dark braid of hair. Silver eyes narrow slightly with speech.  _ He doesn’t change much, _ Grif thinks,  _ in all the right ways. _

“Oh, calm down. I have business for you.” 

“Do tell.” 

“Ah, c’mon, all things in good time. Why don’t you take a break? Sit back, relax, enjoy the view with your best friend? You really never take a break, Locus.”

**Author's Note:**

> This piece of writing has been cross-posted to the writing blog I share with my partner, aptly named @writing-partners on tumblr. 
> 
> Questions, prompts, and anything about this AU should be directed to maggie-wittington on tumblr.


End file.
